


Goodnight and Good Luck

by MaggieMay



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Billy Is A Rock, Canon Compliant, Canon Typical Themes, Cowboy Nonsense, Explicit Language, Goody Apparently Speaks All Of Them, Joshua Faraday Doesn't Speak Any Language Properly, M/M, Maybe - Freeform, Missing Scenes, Nightmares, Non-Explicit Foreplay, PTSD, Probably Not More F-Bombs Than Your Standard PG-13 Film, The Battle For Rose Creek, fluff?, see what i did there?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 21:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10396764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaggieMay/pseuds/MaggieMay
Summary: “It’s jammed,” says Billy, because he won’t say ‘broken’ aloud.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleLynn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLynn/gifts).



> There's a lot going on here, I'm aware. This be my take on the relationship, both romantic and otherwise... its recipient asked for something fluffy, and she got this instead. For that, I can only apologise.

Billy doesn’t truly believe Goodnight will leave, until he does. He’s as he’s always been -- forever clinging to the belief that Goody’ll come right somehow; that there’s six good days for the half-dozen that are God-awful, and that a pair of arms in the night will keep away the worst. It’s the worst part of loving someone who’s damaged, and Billy’s been in love – in denial – for years.

Actually, it’s not so much the denial as the discovery of it. Smarter, quicker men than Billy Rocks (of which there are, to his knowledge, markedly few) could’ve seen this coming, through Goody’s easy banter with that Yankee, Faraday, to the moment when Billy wiped blood from his blades on the town strip, and realised the total absence of it in Goodnight’s face, dripping instead from a torn wrist to trembling fingers, and Billy grasps Goody’s rifle like he wants to grasp his hand, and he lies, and he dreads, but he still doesn’t believe he’ll run.

“It’s jammed,” says Billy, because he won’t say ‘broken’ aloud.

**

Whether the others know what they are to each other – whether they were smart enough to guess (Chisholm), or whether they couldn’t give a shit either way (unequivocally, Faraday) – Billy can’t say. They’ve got rooms of their own in the Elysium, which does nothing to keep Billy from Goodnight’s, because it seems inconsiderate, somehow, to make Goody move himself further than necessary along his knife-edge.

Goody’s a tactile guy; he sits with his arm around Billy’s chair, or around Billy himself, throwing whiskey into a split grin like stones into a canyon, and Billy can’t help but wonder when this particular rock is going to hit the bottom. Laughter comes easy at dinner, even with the fight for Rose Creek hot on their heels. Billy says little because it allows him to listen well, chewing contemplatively as he does, and leaning back in his chair until his shoulder blade is in contact with Goody’s hand between them.

The floor is Faraday’s, as is often the case. They’ve got a collective skinfull in them, and he’s toeing the line on the right side of ‘amusing vs. obnoxious’, throwing arms wide around a boyish smirk that shows all his teeth.

“You and your long damn words.” It’s Goodnight he’s addressing, glancing past Billy in that way bigger, bolder folks tend to do, right before he sticks a knife in their neck. “My Ma used to say, ‘you don’t win friends with brains, or tame a horse with good intentions.’”

Across the table, feet swung up on a vacant stool, Vasquez barks out a laugh.

“ _Cabrón_ , you just make so many things so clear…”

“Now, be fair, _compadre_.” Goodnight takes the cigarette from between his teeth to say his piece – a sure sign his interest has been well and truly piqued. “You don’t need no schooling to learn to learn them card tricks our friend’s so mighty fond of.” He throws a wink sideways, like he’s got Faraday in his sights, but Billy in his mind. “Just a big mouth and a quick draw.”

Faraday smirks, but can’t contest, lifting his glass from the table between finger and thumb, tipping another mouthful home. “I’ll have you know Ma Faraday was proud of my mouth. One of her greatest ever inventions.”

“Mi madre, she say ‘ _mucho hablar Y poco decir juntos suelen ir_.’” Billy, as well as Goody, picks up on the meaning, and chuckles as Vasquez tips cigarette ash from a glowing orange tip. “I think this is far more relevant, no?”

“Hey, _esé_ ,” says Faraday, not without an edge. “Any chance we could get some _l’Anglais_ up in here?”

Goody – a stone-cold Creole – all-out guffaws.  
   
“He’s saying,” says Jack, “that the good Lord gave you a big mouth.” The big man is gentler here, amongst friends, chopping jerky for his biscuits with far more care than a man of his size ought to be capable of. “Or his Mama is, at least.”

“Yeah? Ain’t that just what I said?” Faraday’s brows furrow, and he points at Goody with his glass. “And he said?”

“No,” says Billy, with Goody’s laughter in his ear. “It’s not.”

“What’s this, Mexican club?” Faraday demands. “Everyone speaks Mexican but me, that it?”

“Faraday, you barely speak goddamn English.” Chisholm’s lone contribution thus far is one the man in question isn’t arguing with. “I wouldn’t bet on this being a fight you’re guaranteed to win.”

“No such thing, Sam,” says Faraday, and it’s watching the thrill of something exciting and unidentifiable cross the gambler’s face that will stick with Billy, long after they’ve left the table. “That’s where the fun comes from.”

Later, when Billy’s got Goodnight all to himself, Goody’s still laughing – long, slow chuckles and short, staccato bursts as he applies the same sporadic energy to the way he traces the lines of Billy’s body, pressed chest-to-chest and still fully-clothed.

“The look on that dumb-shit’s face…”

“Do you want to talk about Faraday now?” Billy asks, and it’s truly moments like these – when Goody is sated on food and hooch and good cheer, and they’re wrapped in each other, near-breathless with lust – that have fuelled Billy’s giant blind spot for years.

“Oh, honey, you bet I don’t,” Goody breathes, full palms pushing upwards, tugging Billy’s shirt from his pants, and roaming full over his chest. “I don’t wanna talk at all.”

Billy himself is no slouch; he pushes up with two hands, humming against Goody’s lips when they come his way, and against Goody’s neck when they don’t. It’s the same push and pull that dominates their whole world, each leaning back on the other, and each with their hands on the reins. He’s almost all the way up, ready to lean down over Goodnight and make good on everything the promise of ‘no talking’ implies, when Goody uses a two-handed grip on Billy’s shirt to tip him onto his back. Billy can’t pretend it’s the shock of the fall or the pressure of the mattress that steals his breath, and wouldn’t want to if he could. No one gets the jump on him, except the only man he allows to.

“You’re a goddamn menace, Goodnight Robicheaux.”

“Well would you hark at your complaining.” Goody’s answering grin is tight with longing, lips taut as leather across his teeth. “What d’you wanna bet I got a more proficient use for that mouth, hm?”

They finish up talking, but are far from quiet.

**

“They’re just dreams, Goody.”

Billy has long since come to terms with the fact that Goodnight’s dreams, and Goody, come as two sides of the same, over-spun coin. They were sharing rooms or sharing camps for a long while before they started sharing a bed, and Billy would always hear. Oftentimes it was gibberish; occasionally it was a name – Melissa. Billy had assumed she was a lover, and spent a year or so listening to her name whimpered, and not asking, until he found out one night she was a kid sister, killed in a Yankee raid on their hometown, when Goodnight wasn’t there to protect them. After that little confession, Billy is never left wondering again. Goody volunteers information piece by piece, like it’s he’s turning the faucet bit by bit to relieve pressure. It took Billy a little longer to figure out that the faucet is plumbed directly into the goddam ocean, and Goody is letting it flow a drip at a time.

It’s not every night, but it is maybe four in seven. Billy lay through fifty-eight of them before he took the matter in-hand, and clapped a palm down on Goodnight’s shoulder, intending to wake him and cut him off mid-nightmare. The other man had come awake with a fearful start, and took up a grip on Billy’s wrist as if he would break it. To this day, Billy doubts he’d have broken the grip, had Goodnight’s hand not been trembling ‘round his arm like a branch in a storm.  
He wakes him every night, after that. Goodnight – Goody, as he was by then – gradually comes to look like he expects the interruption, then as if he looks forward to it, and eventually, finally, like it’s the only thing keeping him here. They become lovers sometime soon after, and all that really changes is that Billy no longer has to cross a room or step over a campfire to wake Goody.

There’s a night where he can’t wake him.

The day passed as they’re wont to do; a scam or two in Shreveport, dinner and drinks, and a whole lot of laughter. They don’t fuck or even fall into the same bed, just tumble across their own mattresses for once, because Goody’s dead tired, and maybe a part of Billy is too, which is why he misses the fact that tonight of all nights, he should be closeby.

It’s the breathing that wakes Billy – taut, terrifying breaths that might be a death rattle – and this time, when Billy has flown from the bed and gripped Goody by the shoulder, his eyes fly open to nothing. He climbs into the bed before Goody can shake or sob or scream his way out of it, and wraps both arms around him, locking his own hand around his own wrist to hold him there, and in that moment, Billy Rocks is certain he could’ve taken the Union army alone, the Confederates too, all lined up and bleeding their accountability through knife wounds into the goddamn dust.

**

For a man who never thought of himself as a talker, Billy sure finds that Goody brings it out in him.

After Melissa, there’s nothing that’s off-limits, and it’s not all misery and hardship – far from it. Goodnight is a fountain of knowledge, and unlike most people, doesn’t take Billy for misunderstanding him, if he doesn’t immediately clap back. Billy has stories of his own, too, from his _halmonee_ – what little he remembers of her, before he’d made the move to America, is all tales and proverbs, and Goody listens as though it gives him genuine pleasure to do so.  
They don’t talk about the war. That’s something other folks do – can’t seem to stop, soon as they hear they’re stood before Goodnight fucking Robicheaux – but not them. Billy’s never been in a war, but he’s seen enough of the South rebuilding itself, and enough of Goodnight attempting to, to know what the aftermath of one looks like. Knows what one smells like too – like laudanum stuffed in with tobacco, passed between his mouth and Goody’s when he gets a little close to something overrun with muskets and navy blue uniforms.

Faraday is as brash about the war, and Goodnight’s role in it, as he is about any and everything. Nonetheless, Billy has wondered whether the war is the reason Faraday’s accent seems to leap between Minnesota and Mississippi whenever Goodnight’s in earshot, likely more out of deference for his own hide, than the feelings of the other man. He needn’t have worried; Faraday would’ve been a kid when the war broke out, and Billy knows Goody saw too many kids laying in those goddamn killing fields to go about putting one there of his own, now the grass has mostly grown back over.

He doesn’t see Goodnight take the practice shots, doesn’t have to, to know he’s made every damn one of them. What he does see, turning away from his suddenly vacated knife range, is Goody making the walk back with his chin tilted down, fists clenched impotently at his sides to keep off the worst of the trembling. Goody and guns have run in a vicious circle for as long as Billy’s known him. Goody sings from the saddle and shoots from the hip, and more often than not, the bullet’s barely left the barrel before he’s bent over puking in the dust. Billy builds a habit of passing him a rag, in silence, and then looking the other way while he wipes up.  
He’s not looking away now.

Goody stalks past him on a lope, like a spooked gelding or a mad dog, and when he raises his gaze to Billy’s… that ought to have been his clue. Billy can see it gathering on his friend’s face, and it’s not a wholly unfamiliar feeling - the two of them crouched in the darkness that follows the lightning bolt, waiting for thunder to roll across.

When they find each other again, they don’t bring it up.

Billy’s not afraid to touch him that night, but not wholly willing either, and not for the first time, he allows himself a split second to picture a Goodnight without the weight pressing down. It’s beyond the reach of, and irrelevant to anything agape might ever do for them. ‘Unconditional’ doesn’t mean shit; the man is Billy’s lover, his friend and the point about which his world has turned since he first realised he was no longer willing to be alone in it, and he’ll be damned if he won’t wish this nightmare was over, for them both. However selfish or dismissive it seems, nobody who’s ever held another person through the night until the shaking stops has ever wished anything other than an end to that part of them, and anyone who says otherwise is a goddamn liar. 

He still doesn’t think Goody will leave. Billy hopes he won’t, because he knows he can’t… because if Goody leaves, he’s leaving alone.  
And Billy’s been anchorless before; he just doesn’t realise until Goody’s gone, and he’s propping the bar, that Goody didn’t stop at the anchor – he’s made off with the whole goddamn boat.

**

He carries Goody’s flask into battle with him, because he knows that when the stupid son of a bitch comes back for it, he’s going to owe Billy one hell of a drink.

It was on his pillow, Billy’s certain. Whichever of them carried him from the bar to the bed the previous night either hadn’t seen it (Jack), was smart enough not to move it (Red), or couldn’t give a shit either way (still, unequivocally, Faraday). In any case, when Billy opens his eyes to the crack of sunlight that’s trying its best to reach down his throat, it’s among the first things he sees, and he reaches for it, popping the lid and taking a long pull, until the nausea passes, and the liquor has settled him enough that he can shake himself up and out of the room.

He still doesn’t think Goody’s left. Which means he doesn’t have it in him to be surprised, when it turns out he hasn’t.  
Goody rides into town the exact opposite of how he left it – with a cry, and the thunder of hooves – and manages to monopolise the ebb and flow of Chisholm’s assault with one screamed warning of artillery.

He comes to Billy as he always has, and as Billy always knew he would.

“Ooh…” Goody reaches for the flask when it’s offered, but keeps Billy’s hand awhile. There’s mischief, and more, in those eyes as he glances at Billy over the caught knuckles, bending for a kiss. “ _À la prochaine, chérie_.”

The laughter is as close to a declaration as they’ll ever get, because such intimate ridiculousness requires no response at all.

**

Billy had it all wrong, of course. But who’d have thought it would take running out of town for Goodnight Robicheaux to come back?

 

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Some translations: 
> 
> \- 'Mucho hablar Y poco decir juntos sullen ir.' - Vasquez's little proverb, loosely translated, means 'Those who speak a lot often say very little.' 
> 
> \- 'Halmonee.' - Korean term for grandmother, spelled out phonetically. 
> 
> \- 'À la prochaine, chérie.' - 'Until we meet again, sweetheart.' Also translated as 'until then', 'see you' or 'see you again', but the full, formal translation was the one intended.


End file.
